"Here, babes?"
His tongue darts out and licks me, lapping the wetness between my lips, plumbing me. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out as my body tenses from his attention. So close, sweetie, bless me you're so close…
"Ahh, yes. Right… here."
He finds that magic spot, and there he stays, sucking and wagging his tongue faster and faster until I think I'm going to die.
Oh… unholy Hell…
Something deep and wild tears through my flesh, and then I'm screaming as every part of me erupts, screaming from joy and unbridled passion.
Anything you want, love, I'll give you anything you want, be anyone you want, just please please please do that to me again, love me again, love me—
The orgasm peaks, then slowly ebbs. Aftershocks roll through me, bucking my hips and curling my toes. Paul kisses my sex after every jerk until my body lies still. Grinning like a lovestruck fool, I sigh, content, and my eyes slip closed.
"So," he says, his fingers stroking my thigh, "can a talented demon like me bring you to orgasm in one sitting?"
"Mmm. Bless me, yes…"
"Good girl. Call my name," he growls, shoving his fingers deep inside of me.
I squeal as I suddenly climax again, rocking me to the core as I shout his name to the deepest level of the Pit—his name, not Paul's, his true name: "Daunuan!"
Wave after wave of unadulterated pleasure breaks over me, crashing on my flesh, stinging my skin with bliss. Daunuan, my mind chimes, the name burning itself into my soul.
Daunuan.
"Now, Jezzie."
He pulls his hand out of me and mounts me, thrusts himself deep inside, deep to the breaking point, then slides out and back in, and again, pumping, faster, faster now, his hands gripping my shoulders and my heart slamming against my chest and my groin is on fire, on fire, oh bless me I'm on fire and he's smiling at me as he fucks me, fucks me raw and he says, "You're mine."
Yes…
He crushes his pelvis against mine and with a grunt, he explodes inside of me—
—and it burns it burns oh help me Sire it's burning me burning me alive—
My body jerks beneath him, bucks him off of me as my muscles try to break away from my bones and they're charring and my flesh is on fire and my heart is cooking in my chest and I'm screaming screaming screaming until my tongue blackens and flakes away—
Hands grasping my face, holding my head still. A voice, his voice, calling to me: "Jezebel! Jesse, hear me!"
And I do, even with the meat of my body broiling in the juice of my blood, I hear him.
"No pain, Jesse. There is no pain."
Like a circuit being flipped, the agony switches off. I feel the conflagration roaring through me, devouring me, but it's someone else's body.
Thank you, I try to say, but all that comes out is a groan.
"Jesse," he says. "Jezzie. It's okay. I'm here."
I'm sinking down, but his strong arms are holding me, keeping me safe. A finger slides across my brow.
"Sleep, babes. I'll wake you when it's over."
The last thing I feel is the press of his lips on mine, and then his kiss steals my breath and the world disappears.
Chapter 14
Across the Dimensions
From somewhere in the gray nothingness around me: "Jezebel."
The voice resonated within me, reverberated through my soul. I knew that voice—its rich timbre, its profound sadness. Lucifer the Light Bringer. I wanted to speak, to throw myself into His arms, to ask any of the thousands of questions bubbling inside. But I couldn't move. Wrapped in a cocoon of nothing, I floated.
He said: "Remember, the butcher may be tricked into turning piper."
Sire, I don't understand…
"Listen."
And I did, but instead of His voice, I heard Daun from far away, saying: "Almost got her…"
"Remember," Lucifer said. "Listen."
In the background, closer now, Daun's voice: "Hang on… yes, there she is."
My brow tingled, as if from the brush of the softest of lips, and then something nudged me, hooked me, reeled me in…
My eyelids fluttered, then opened. Everything around me was still gray, but I sensed colors just out of my field of vision. A damp thickness enveloped me like clothing soaked with sweat and semen; it clung to my limbs, my skin, weighing me down. It was sort of relaxing in a disconcerting way, like floating in a hot tub filled with congealed blood. Not that there was anything weird about bathing in blood… except there was. That sort of thing Just Wasn't Done. That sort of thing was Very Bad. Problem was, I distinctly recalled splashing through fountains of blood, gushing from severed jugulars. I remembered the patter patter patter of the thick liquid slapping against my skin, remembered the sweet aroma of fermenting copper.
Thus the disconcerting feeling.
I pondered, floating there in the gray skein, wondered what I was. Demon. Human. A demonic mortal with a soul, complete with the ability to love someone other than itself, intimate with the concept of sacrifice. I had existed without a soul for four thousand years. Now all that was left of me was a soul. But I still felt like me, whatever that meant—the me who seduced mortals with my body and took them down to Hell, the me who seduced mortals with my dance and took them for all their money. Me.
The former succubus, the one-time human.
Jezebel.
From somewhere above me, Angel's voice: "I don't understand. How could she have vanished?"
"Fuck if I know." That was Daun again, closer, just beyond the gray veil. "But I've got her now. Come on, Jezebel. Time to shed your skin."
Pressure against my lips, pushing against the cocoon around me. A ripping sound, then his tongue broke through, red as fire, and thrust into my mouth, found my own tongue, dueled with slashes of flame.
Ooh. Whatever I was, demon or human, the temperature in the hot tub just got lacked up a notch. Sweet…
As the kiss deepened, the gray skein molded itself to me, clung to me as if desperate for purchase in the growing storm of passion. Then the mouth attached to mine jerked up, taking me with it. I stretched, stretched, stretched until I reached the breaking point—then snapped like ethereal taffy, burst through the wet grayness, still locked in a fiery kiss.
There really should be a word that combines "whoa" and "yum."
The tongue drew back, the lips pulled away, and the kiss ended with a quiet, anticlimactic pft. Unanchored, I swayed on my feet, eyes closed, feeling so light that angels would have traded in their wings to attach me to their backs. I sensed my limbs but didn't feel the weight of gravity pulling them down.
I felt like I could fly. Which was silly; humans can't fly.
"Humans do fly," Megaera says to me before I run away from Hell. "They use marvelous machines to do so. Airplanes and helicopters and gliders and parachutes and the tike. But they do fly. They just had to leant how."
No, not like that. I felt like I could step onto air and drift away.
That's because you're dead, Jezzie.
Oh. Right.
More out of habit than anything else, I took a deep, cleansing breath. Released it. But that was it—no follow-up inhale, no automatic organic switches being flipped to tell my body, Lookit, you need to oxygenate me, pronto. After a month of breathing, not needing to was downright weird.
No worries there, Jezzie. You're going to Hell, and you're probably going to be destroyed. You won't have to fret about not breathing for very long.
Thank you very fucking much. Get out of here, Meg.
I told you before. I'm not Meg. I'm you.
A conscience with an identity crisis. Fine then. I'll call you Peaches.
I don't like Peaches. Peaches is for a fat poodle with a stupid haircut. Peaches is for a stripper with more silicone than brain cells. Peaches is not for the conscience of a one-time succubus.
Complain to the management and get the fuck out of here.
How about Elektra?
I'd make a cool Elektra.
Scram.
Peaches scrammed. Look at that—a bright side to the afterlife.
I opened my eyes and saw the strangest thing: Daun, on his knees before me, a look on his face that flowed mercurially from horror to terror to complete adoration. Awed, I thought, staring dumbstruck at the demon who owned my soul. He's completely awed.
Of me.
Next to him, the cherub, too, was gazing at me like I'd just introduced her to the joys of cunnilingus. She covered her mouth with a delicate hand, as if trying to catch a gasp before it escaped.
I glanced over my shoulder, but I quickly confirmed what I'd already known—they were really staring like that at me, not at some magnificent god-type hovering behind me. Turning back to the stunned supernatural pair, I said, "What? Do I have something between my teeth?"
"You," Daun said, his voice breathy, "you're—"
"Never going to blend in Hell, looking like that," Angel said, her words cutting into Daun's like a celestial blade. "Your soul is clean. You'll stand out like—"
"Like an angel among the demons," Daun murmured, still looking at me in a very unDaunish way.
Before I could say there were angels among the demons, slumming as succubi, the blonde waggled her fingers. A wave of power washed over me, scrubbed me with magic. My body tingled, tensed… and changed. A cherry-red stain worked its way over my hands, my arms, my torso. On my head, my hair rippled, receded until I was bald as a lioness. Below, my pubic hair thickened and curled, then stretched out, spreading across my hips and down my ass and legs until it covered my lower limbs like a fungus. I felt my feet lengthen and harden, the toes mashing together and the heels pulling up. Staring at the ground, I saw hooves at the base of my legs, gleaming, solid. I didn't have to see my face to know that my eyes had transformed into those of a cat's—filled with a luminescent green and a slit for a pupil—that my lips were a leathery black, that my teeth had sharpened into fangs.
The human shape had painlessly given way to that of a scarlet satyr, minus the goat's tail and horns. My natural form. I stared at my hands, at how my claws extended, begging to rend flesh and pick out marrow from human bones.
Something swelled in my heart, but I couldn't tell if it was relief or sadness. Gah, these mortal feelings were killing me. Did kill me. Stupid feelings.
Bless me, if I was really dead, why was I still caught up in the human touchy-feely bullshit of emotion? Souls didn't have feelings—sure, they reacted to pain and pleasure, but they didn't waste time contemplating how things made them react. As far as I knew, they just… were. So why was I experiencing something akin to regret?
Whether demonic or mortal, philosophy still wasn't one of my strong points.
On my left wrist, the golden Rope of Hecate winked at me. The vivid red of my skin made the gold shine all the more brightly. That the jewelry was on my spirit form boded very well. Now all I had to do was get Angel to do one more teensy favor…
"There," the blonde said, sounding incredibly pleased. "Don't you look like a beautiful creature of the Pit?"
I blew her a kiss. "Isn't flattery a sin?"
She blushed.
"At least I'm rubbing off on you." I ran my hands up my torso, over my bare breasts, up over my head. "Bless me, I'd forgotten what it feels like to be a demon."
"You wear it well," Angel said.
Next to her, Daun shuddered like a big, malefic hound shaking off water. "Spare me. No matter what plane of reality, women are all the same. You're all about the clothing. At least you didn't ask if this shape makes you look fat."
My eyes widened. "I look fat?"
"You look juicy," Angel said.
Gah! "Juicy in a squeezable way, or in like a bless me, that girl'd better do a juice fast for a few millennia way?"
Daun's mouth quirked into a smile. "Juicy in the I'd do you way."
I beamed. Daun always knew just what to say.
"Come on, babes. Let's get the party started."
Taking a last look at the trappings of my former life, a lump formed in my throat. On the ground, my naked body lay discarded. Empty. The gold bracelet on my corpse's wrist sparkled, giving the illusion of life. Bless me, my human body looked so delicate, like a porcelain sex doll. Humans die so easily—a snapped neck, a shattered spine, disease. A broken heart. Was that why their bodies could experience so much pleasure—to offset how fragile they really are, how they could be extinguished in a blink?
Angel had one hand pressed against my body's forehead; her other hand was on Paul's chest. I approached him, knelt by his side. When I tried to brush his hair away from his eyes, my fingers passed through his brow. Crap. The only entity I could touch now was Daun, because he was bound to my soul. To everything and everyone else, I was a whisper, a hint. Insignificant.
Mental note: Being a ghost sucked angel feathers.
I leaned down and kissed Paul, pretending I could feel his lips against mine. I'm saving you, love. I promise.
Then I rose and wrapped my arms around the angel, miming a hug. As she stammered out a good wish and (ick) a blessing, I whispered in her ear (literally in—I overshot and wound up with my mouth halfway inside her face), "When we're gone, move the bracelet from my wrist to his."
She opened her mouth, perhaps to protest, perhaps to agree, but I silenced her with a vaporous kiss. When I pulled back, I thought I tasted peppermint and gold on my lips.
"Farewell," she said, with all the enthusiasm of a doctor pronouncing a patient dead on the table.
Look at that, she was trying to cheer me up. I smiled brightly at her. "See you soon, Angel."
With one final look—at Paul, at my body, at the physical reminders of my life—I turned to Daun. "Okay, sweetie. Let's go to Hell."
"Babes," he said, caressing my cheek, "that's music to my ears."
Shifting between planes is sort of like diving into a swimming pool filled with K-Y Jelly—it doesn't hurt, but there's a moment of utter oozishness when your form exists in both dimensions. You're covered in the slippery goo of conflicting realities, and you reek of sex. (Actually, that last part is probably unique to Seducers. But whatever.)
"Here we go, babes." Daun led me by the hand, helped me step through to Hell, and the heat slapped me in the face. On a cold day, the Abyss hovered around 3,000 degrees. The sensitive hairs in my nostrils curled and flaked away; the fine hairs on my face, arms and belly shriveled. Sweat beaded on my brow and around my breasts, only to immediately evaporate. More than the feeling of the heat was its undeniable stink: an eye-watering blend of burning sewage and spoiling meat, layered on top of dirt and rot.
I grinned. Damn, I'd missed this place.
We'd emerged in a small room, dimly lit in shades of red—the light emanating through the earthen walls, straight from the Lake of Fire that surrounded Hell like the Belt Parkway surrounded Brooklyn. Around the smell of searing heat was the cloying, graveyard scent of fresh soil—and the tang of sex. We were in the mountain complex of Pandemonium, home to all the nefarious. More specifically, as my nose told me, we were in the Red Light District, which housed all creatures of Lust.
Except for a squalid sleeping mat on the loamy floor, the chamber was completely barren. Unless you were one of Hell's elite, you were privy only to the common rooms, which all lesser-ranked demons shared. No individuality allowed—personalization was frowned upon, in the if-you-disobey-you-get-your-liver-plucked-out sense.
"Home sweet home," Daun said, pulling me close. "Let's you and me celebrate."
He crushed my mouth to his, bruised my lips with a violent kiss. Down in the Abyss, my soul was as solid as his rod—which, based on how his rod was currently doing pushups on my belly, was solid indeed. I opened my mouth and rode his tongue, thrilling in how a simple kiss could make my entire body hum.
Stop, my brain shouted, flashing a desperate message to my body. We're on a rescue mission! Nookie later!
Then Daun's fingers slid down my back and rubbed
against the rim of my ass, and my brain shorted out.
Just as I started melting against his body, something hooked into the scruff of my neck and yanked. I fell backward, then I was slammed face-first into the wall. Yeowch. Talons dug into the soft flesh on the back of my neck, shooting darts of pain up the base of my head.
Someone pressed against my back, pinned me to the hard-packed dirt of the wall. A purr of delight in my ear, and then a woman's lush voice:
"I knew you'd come," Lillith said.
Chapter 15
Pandemonium
Just as it registered that I was in very deep shit, Lillith yanked my head back and smashed it against the wall again. A burst of white exploded behind my eyes, and for a moment everything went a lovely, numbing gray. Then my forehead shrieked that getting my face mashed against solid rock hurts like a bastard, and the numbness decided to agree—it dissipated, replaced with spikes of agony driven into my head by an invisible mallet. Squashed against the wall, my face rubbed against the soil; dirt coated my tongue, slid down my throat, and my nostrils clogged with the stench of earth and decay. I squirmed, but Lillith's body pressed hard against my back, gluing me in place.
This was really, really bad.
No, forget bad. This sucked.
Behind me, Daun's voice rang out—cold, regal, almost like one of the Arrogant: "You have no business here, Lillith. Jezebel is mine."
Testosterone at its finest. You tell her, sweetie.
"Yes," Lillith chuckled, a sound like a spastic vibrator. "I see your little bond, incubus. Very clever. But my claim supersedes yours. Your bond means nothing to me."
Uh oh.
Daun snorted. "A Nightmare overruling the claim of a Seducer? I don't think so."
"I may be a Nightmare," she said, turning the word into a disease, "but I'm still the consort of King Asmodai. You watch your tone with me, incubus, or I'll have to teach you some manners."
She slowly pulled her talons out of my flesh, first one, then another, then the third and finally the last, and I bit down on my lip as my neck screeched to high Heaven, singing its pain like gospel. Fuuuuuuck, that hurt. Through the agony, I felt a rubbing pressure on my right shoulder. It took me a moment to understand what it was.
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